Skakel — a nephew of Ethel
Kennedy — was convicted of bludgeoning his
neighbor, Martha Moxley, to death with a golf club in 1975 when
they were both teenagers.

He was freed on a $1.2 million bail in 2013 after Thomas A.
Bishop, Connecticut lower-court judge,
overturned the murder conviction. Bishop wrote a 136-page
opinion
criticizing the lawyer who represented Skakel in the
2002 trial.

Bishop ruled that Skakel would likely have been acquitted if
Michael Sherman, Skakel's lawyer, had focused more on Skakel's
brother Thomas, reports
The Associated Press.

Dorthy Moxley, Martha's mother, told reporters that she hoped the
court will reinstate Skakel's conviction, according to
The Wall Street Journal.

The strange case against Skakel had no physical evidence and went
unsolved for two decades. Skakel's
life of privilege was interrupted in 2000,
when he was charged in the horrific murder at the age of 39.

In 1975, Moxley was killed just outside her family's house with a
6-iron golf club owned by Michael Skakel's mother Anne Reynolds
Skakel. He and his brother Thomas were both suspects in the case,
as
was a tutor who lived with the Skakels. Nobody was arrested
after the 1975 murder, though, and the case went cold for
decades.

The case started to heat up again in 1998, after former LAPD detective Mark
Fuhrman wrote a book called "Murder
in Greenwich: Who Killed Martha Moxley?" Fuhrman theorized
that Michael Skakel killed Moxley after he saw her kiss his
brother. That same year, the state attorney in Bridgeport,
Connecticut convened a grand jury to see if there was enough
evidence to prosecute any of the suspects, according to The
Times.

Skakel — who had worked with his cousin at a company called
Citizens Energy Corporation and as a professional speed skier —
was convicted of murder in 2002 despite a lack of physical
evidence. The Times reported that the jury heard evidence that he
had unrequited romantic feelings for Moxley and access to the
weapon used to kill her.